Pictured above: Winner Zhaedyn Hodge Sigars (center) poses with Florida Humanities’ Alex Buell and Steve Seibert from Howard W. Blake High School in Tampa won the championship again after taking home the title last year.
Cassidy Schuck | The Crow’s Nest
By Dylan Hart
There was no thunderous fanfare when Zhaedyn Hodge Sigars conquered the Florida stage for the second time. His teacher, Casey Curry, did not pull off her glasses and sob with joyful tears like last year.
And yet, it was a moment of catharsis for Zhaedyn, who smiled thinly at the announcement.
“I didn’t feel nervous. I felt calm with it,” said the 17-year-old Howard W. Blake High School senior. “I just felt like I needed to succeed again in order to showcase what I believe is the value of this and how seriously I take this art form.”
Back-to-back winner Zhaedyn, along with 37 other high school students from across the state, recited three poems for judges at the Poetry Out Loud Florida Finals in the University Student Center ballroom on Feb. 29 in a bid to become Florida’s champion.
Zhaedyn received a cash prize of $500, as well as $500 for his school’s library to spend on poetry materials. But most of all, Zhaedyn won an all-expense-paid trip back to Washington, D.C., in April to compete for the title of Poetry Out Loud National Champion and a $20,000 scholarship.
For the first four hours, students took turns in alphabetical order reciting poems to the best of their ability. They were scored on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, evidence of understanding, overall performance and accuracy, with special consideration given to the latter two categories.
Over-the-top enthusiasm or boisterous movements may seem intuitive, but Poetry Out Loud emphasizes proper dynamics, where emotion and intensity are not used as a crutch to grab listeners but instead to fit the message of the poem.
Although students had to best their whole school to attend, there was a considerable range of grade levels at the state competition, with the youngest being an eighth-grade student taking high school classes.
There was no shortage of poetry types, either. Some opted for classics from poets like Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson — whom one student called “the original literary emo girl” — while others picked modern pieces, like “Cartoon Physics, Part 1,” by Nick Flynn or “End of Days Advice from an Ex-Zombie,” by Michael Derrick Hudson.
Judges for the event included poets Silvia Curbelo and Dennis Rodney Jr., Eckerd College professor Gloria Muñoz, retired Florida Humanities staff member Ann Schoenacher and St. Petersburg Poet Laureate Helen Wallace.
The goal of the competition, beyond selecting a winner, is to help students “master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life,” according to its website.
In front of about 100 attendees — many of them parents or teachers of competitors from as far as Miami — Zhaedyn recited three poems with which he had a personal connection.
The poems were “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley, which he selected for Henley’s story of being driven by a higher power; “The People, Yes,” by Carl Sandburg, because of his admiration for Abraham Lincoln, whom he called his “favorite person;” and “Momma Said,” by Calvin Forbes, which highlights themes he considers important to his life.
After almost four hours of recitations, judges selected 10 finalists to continue to the third round. Suddenly, with the departure of 27 students and at least as many chaperones, the crowd was thinned. Zhaedyn, dressed in all black, stood out as the only male among the final ten.
From their cumulative scores in all three rounds, judges selected Ava Johnson — a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School — and Kinsey Campbell — a junior at The First Academy in Orlando — as second and third place winners. Johnson won $200 and a $300 school library stipend, while Campbell won $100.
For all three students, the competition and its preparation was an opportunity to dive into the art form and connect with poems that they might not have otherwise.
Johnson recalled hating poetry when she was younger because she “was scared of it” — but a year in school going in-depth on the work of Frost helped her learn to love the medium.
She said she had never connected with a recitation as much as her first poem from the competition, Randall Mann’s “The Mortician in San Francisco,” a reflection on the assassination of openly gay politician Harvey Milk and subsequent convictions.
“I think it’s important that, through poetry, we tell the stories of people who cannot,” Johnson said.
An important part of the competition is interpretation. Since there’s no restriction on students picking the same poem, several pieces were recited more than once.
Johnson — whose third poem, “Dream Song 14,” by John Berryman, was also recited by another student — was surprised by how much a different interpretation changed her understanding of the poem.
“To see that recitation after I had spent months on the recitation thinking it was this way, seeing someone go up and perform it entirely differently was fantastic to see,” she said.
This year, Zhaedyn hopes to bring everything he learned from the previous national competition with him in order to win it all. His biggest lesson: learning “to be passionate without being angry,” he said.
Regardless of his ranking in D.C., Zhaedyn is publishing a book of poetry that is expected to be released just before the national competition. Next year, he hopes to attend college and eventually obtain a Master of Fine Arts degree to teach poetry.
“A lot of people hate poetry because they have teachers who tell them, ‘Here, read this,’ and then they give them some cookie cutter explanation for it, but poetry is so much more than just poetry,” he said.
“There’s so much poetry in everything we do. Poetry moves in everything. Poetry has done so much for this country.”
